Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success (K.M. Weiland) A great book for pantsers wanting to adopt a bit more novel structure, or writers looking to create a map for their story to follow! If you need some guidance as you outline, this is the book for you.

On Writing – A Memoir Of The Craft (Spethen King) A classic read by a master storyteller. This book is perfect for writers looking to turn a hobby into a career, and the advice within is smart and direct.

Elements of Fiction Writing – Conflict and Suspense (James Scott Bell) This will help you pull readers into the character’s world and keep them on the edge of their seat. Tension is something that all great writers must master, and this bestselling thriller writer can help you do it.

Save the Cat (Blake Snyder) offers advanced story structure help through the filter of film. Screenwriters must condense a wide angle story into a feature, meaning they know exactly how to distill the best moments of any novel or play. We can learn a ton from screenwriting, and this book should be required reading for anyone who wants to really understand the power of storytelling.

Hero’s 2 Journeys Streaming Series (Hauge/Vogler) I am tooting the screenplay horn again, because this streaming series between story experts Michael Hauge and Christopher Vogler is one of the most wonderful things I have come across. If you want to understand story structure at a deep level and actually see how important the hero’s Internal and External Journeys work in tandem to create an unforgettable character, grab this. Grab it now. If you write novels, don’t think this isn’t for you. It’s for anyone who wants to create breakout characters and write story lines that will grab readers from start to finish.

Rise of the Machines: Human Authors in a Digital World (Kristen Lamb) is a book to have on hand to navigate the social media world. A huge advocate of writers, Kristen knows her way around a platform and will help you build it the WANA way, showing you how to form genuine relationships with readers instead of adding to the void of promotional white noise.

The Urban Setting Thesaurus and The Rural Setting Thesaurus are descriptiongame-changers for writers. Filled with description lessons, examples, and yes, sensory detail for 225 different locations, writers will learn how to master description and add incredible depth and meaning to their storytelling.

And finally, The Emotional Wound Thesaurus tackles a virtually unexplored area of writing: the impact of psychological trauma. If you want to go deeper than ever before to really understand the fears motivating your character and the past wounds he or she must overcome to grow and change, these 118 different wounding events, and accompanying groundbreaking teaching content, will help you do it.

Our books are a favorite with writers, editors, and agents all over the world, and are used in university level programing. To date, they’ve been translated into 6 languages and collectively sold nearly 300,000 copies.

30 Responses to Recommended Writing Books

Am I missing it? Back when it was only the emotion thesaurus, as you added new emotions, you created a “companion” document. I had downloaded it and printed it off. Kept it folded in my book. Now, it is so bedraggled that it is time to reprint. I purchased the ebook thinking that it might have it all together but nope. Help. Where it that?

Kristen, are you thinking of Emotional Amplifiers? That’s a companion booklet to The Emotion Thesaurus, but it’s not something we continually add to; it’s a published books and contains 15 states of being that can amplify a character’s emotion: hunger, sickness, pain, attraction, inebriation, etc. It’s being sold for $.99, and you can find it on our Bookstore page.

I have all 6 books, but I’ve been using the Emotion Thesaurus, Negative Trait Thesaurus, and Positive Trait Thesaurus for a while. They have been helping so much. I can’t wait to see what you put out there next. You are amazing.

I have your book The Emotion Thesaurus, and it’s amazing! It has helped me broaden my ability to express feelings through showing and not telling. I ordered the Positive and Negative Traits books and can’t wait to get them. I’m working on my fifth book and always looking for ways to learn and improve. Thank you both for sharing your talents and helping us writers improve our craft.

Thanks so much for the kind note, Jerrid. I’m very happy to hear that our books are helping you learn and improve—though with 5 books under your belt, you’re going to learn so much more through simple hard work and tenacity. Good for you! And thanks for your support :).

I was wondering something. I wanted to get your Emotion, Positive and Negative Thesauri.

But I wonder whether your Emotion Thesaurus has an entry for “Sadness”? (For instance, say, your character has just lost her sister)

Also, if I want to make my characters stronger, do I start with the Positive Trait Thesaurus? Or do I start with the Negative Trait Thesaurus? Which start (positive or negative) would be better for beginning writers and which start would be better for experienced writers?

Hi, Andy! Thanks for your interest in our books. To answer your questions, yes, The Emotion Thesaurus does have an entry for sadness, so that may be able to help with your character’s situation. As for the character books, I don’t think one or the other is better from an experience standpoint; both of them cover different material that helps to explain where our characters’ traits come from. The front matter of The Negative Trait Thesaurus digs pretty deeply into where flaws are born; it explores wounding events from the past, lies that we adopt in an effort to keep from experiencing those hurts again, and the flaws that result. The Positive Trait Thesaurus covers not only how positive traits are formed, but also how to choose the right attributes for a character, how to show (instead of telling) those attributes, and common pitfalls when creating characters. So, honestly, I think it depends on which information could be of most help to you.

My suggestion is to use the Look Inside feature at Amazon and go through the Table of Contents for each book. See what jumps out at you as being something you need to learn more about, and go from there.

Good for you for writing a book–that’s great! What I suggest to all young writers is to get involved in a critique group, because we learn so much from others and it can really speed the process up when we can draw on another’s knowledge and perspective. Becca and I both joined The Critique Circle, which also has many teen writers in addition to adults of all genres. You should check it out! I’ll leave the link here. http://www.critiquecircle.com/

I can already see that your books are concise and worthy of being labeled TOOLS. I’m so excited to have found your books and now your website. The Emotion Thesaurus is on its way (in Dead Tree Format as my son would say) and I’ve bought the other two as ebooks. I’m about halfway through the intro chapters of Positive Traits. You have provided exactly what I need. I have known for some time that I don’t know my heroine well enough, and that what I do know about her I haven’t “shown” well enough to make her truly accepted by readers. The secondary characters, strangely enough, came to me well-defined. This is my first foray into novel writing – well, any writing, really – and I can see that of all the books I’ve read/purchased, yours are exactly what I need exactly when I need it. Thank you, ladies!

I am thrilled that you found these books just when you needed to–I absolutely love that when this happens to me! Very excited for you that you’re jumping into novel writing. This community is filled with the very best people, and there is help everywhere. 🙂

Sometimes secondary characters come to us more easily because the pressure is off, and we can let our creative minds take over more. The protag, there is so much we must do and show, so many layers to get right. Secondary characters are important and fulfill an important role in the hero’s development, but they aren’t the star. This gives us a bit more freedom to write instinctively. 😉

I purchased the negative trait thesaurus and loved it so much I just purchased the emotions and positive traits books as well. Very well written, we information every writer needs to know. I highly recommend these books.